This festival strand offers a very selective view of the film year 1918. A single title has to stand in for a whole genre, Skids ad Scallawags serves as a pars pro toto for the vast production of slapstick in 1918, with so much of Semon, Fatty and all the others. In 1918, Douglas Fairbank senior was Hollywood’s most popular actor, a fact represented here by a short fragment. Thirty meters – less than two minutes – testify how well he deserved his immense popularity and success.

“The lions roar. Fairbanks leans against one of the cell walls and a secret door opens. A young woman in long white robes enters. She lifts her veil and says ‘You have come!’. Fairbanks smiles and declares ‘I think I’ll stay’”. The fragment, catalogued as “Fairbanks Can 4” in the BFI Catalogue, can easily be identified: Fairbanks imprisoned, lions and a harem girl add up to Bound in Morocco (1918), a lost film by Allan Dwan.

Mariann Lewinsky